It's me... BREE-in

It's hard for me to believe, but we have now started the long journey of school!  Kaylin had her first day of kindergarten today.

Last night we had a special back-to-school dinner for her.  I wanted it to be fun and simple and my sister had the great idea to make sack lunches.  I made deli sandwiches and bought little packages of caramel for dipping apple slices and packages of baby carrots.  I put some chips in a baggie and splurged and got bottled root beer.  I put Kaylin's food in her new lunch box and we went to one of her favorite parks.  She thought it was amazing.




Kaylin was really quiet while waiting in line to go into the school.  She held my hand the whole time and didn't want to talk to anyone.  I was totally fighting back the tears.  I walked with her into her classroom and helped her find her seat.  After a minute she said, "When are you going to leave, Mom?"  Apparently she was going to be fine.


Blogger is cutting off the side of my picture, she wants to be a mom and a teacher when she grows up.

 
She is one happy girl.  She loves to tell everyone that she has already lost 4 teeth.  Kindergarten starts in two weeks.  I can't believe how big she is getting!

I saw this baby life quilt over 2 years ago and knew I had to make it for someone.  My sister gave me the perfect opportunity when she decided to not find out the gender of baby #3.  Since I couldn't make her anything gender specific, and she already has a lot of the basics, I decided to make her a quilt.  She uses basically the same colors for a boy or a girl, so it wasn't tough to make a gender neutral quilt for her.



I backed it with flannel so it's nice and soft.

Hopefully Kelsey doesn't mind, but I'm stealing a picture from her blog of my cute baby nephew on his quilt:


Look how he matches the quilt!  I told you my sister likes those colors!

Summer has finally arrived in Seattle and the girls couldn't be happier.  Kaylin loves the summer.  Even in the winter when it was sunny outside, she would ask if we could get her pool out and play in the back yard.  Since we live in Seattle, she equates the sun with the summer :-).  It took her awhile to figure out that it can be sunny outside and still be cold.


Nana and Pop Pop gave the girls this fun sprinkler.  Lauren especially loves it.  She kept saying, "Come on Kaylin!"  My favorite was when she said, "Come on Kaylin, let's get wet!"

Tonight we headed to Dick's for cheeseburgers and shakes and then hit up Cal Anderson Park across the street.  After playing on the playground for awhile we let the girls play in the fountain.  We weren't planning on them getting wet, but luckily we had a couple of towels in the trunk so they were able to dry off before driving home.



For those of you who know Kaylin well, please notice that she is wearing SHORTS.  You are not seeing things.  After about 2 years of wearing only dresses, with or without leggings, Kaylin is starting to wear regular pants. I view this as a small miracle.  I also think it makes her look so much older which makes me kind of sad.


We are all definitely happy that summer has arrived, even if it only stays for a week or two.

We had a fun 4th of July.  In the morning, Eric went golfing with his dad and brother.  That evening we had a BBQ at Eric's parents.  For fireworks we tagged along with the Greens to their friends' (who we've met a few times) parents' house on Lake Lucerne in Maple Valley. 


 Before it was dark enough for us to enjoy the fireworks, Lauren tried out karaoke.  She didn't want to hold a microphone or sing, but she enjoyed standing on the stage.


 Kaylin and the boys had front row seats for the show.  Yes, this is the best shot I could get.


Lauren liked the fireworks too, but she wanted to stay farther away from where they were lighting them off.  Like mother, like daughter.


While she enjoyed looking at the fireworks, she didn't enjoy hearing them so close up.  They were loud!  She pulled her hood over her face a few times when they lit off the big aerials.

The girls were exhausted.  I had to wake them up the next day so we could take Kaylin to her swimming lessons.

I'm so grateful for our country and for all of those who help keep us free!

Kaylin absolutely loved preschool this year.  I loved it too.  We chose to go to a co-op.  I worked in the classroom 1-2 times a month and I watched my friend's daughter 1-2 times a month while she had a turn.  I loved getting to know the teacher, the kids, and the other parents.  Kaylin went to preschool twice a week, but some kids went three times and other kids went four, it was up to each family.  There were also monthly parent meetings where we discussed matters relating to the preschool and we learned about topics that would help us parent and teach our children.  It was an awesome program for both of us.  We were sad to see the year end!

Near the end of the school year we went on a field trip to Seahurst Beach.  The parent educator, who is in the classroom a couple of times a month, is a volunteer beach naturalist.  We went on a really low tide day and Teacher Susan was able to tell us all about the various creatures we found.



Lauren was mostly interested in the many puddles on the beach, and then she found the biggest puddle of all:

 
 I need to buy that girl some rain boots.  Luckily I am well aware of her puddle obsession and I brought a full change of clothes.

The kids put on a fun Mother's Day celebration.  They made us flowers and a place mat with a butterfly made from their hand prints.  They served us fruit salad that they helped prepare and performed some songs and poems.





On the back of the place mat each kid wrote something about their mom.  We had to walk around and try to figure out which one was ours based off the description.  I walked right on by mine, multiple times.  Here's what it said:

"My mom likes it when it's her birthday because we give her presents and she loves Mother's Day.  She likes to go shopping because she gets things for bake sales.  She likes earning things.  When she was little she liked to play jump rope."

I don't know where she comes up with these things.  KAYLIN likes birthdays and Mother's/Father's Days.  KAYLIN likes to earn things (she's had quite a few sticker charts).  I have no idea about the bake sale comment, I've never participated in a bake sale and I don't even know where she's heard about one.  She does love to go to the monthly potluck at church, so Eric and I are thinking that it might have been a miscommunication with the teacher.  I'm also not sure about the jump rope reference.  I did love to jump rope, I was in the jump rope club in elementary school, but I haven't told her that before.  Anyway... she's a funny kid.  She was so proud of what she said so I of course acted like I knew it was mine immediately.  The kids weren't in the room when we were figuring out whose was whose, so she'll never know.  Lots of other kids said that their mom likes to cook, clean, and sleep, so I was definitely impressed by Kaylin's creativity :-).

One of the last days of preschool was pajama day.  They had some tents and sleeping bags out and a pretend campfire.  I was assigned to work that day and was in charge of the snack so I had breakfast type foods.  The kids built towers and other structures with empty cereal boxes.  It was a lot of fun, and the inspiration for the pajama birthday party that Kaylin wants to have next year, as I mentioned in my last post.


Kaylin and her best preschool friend.

The last day was Preschool Graduation.  Kaylin is a super fun, outgoing, talkative kid... on her terms.  She doesn't like to be in front of people.

Do you see her?



Yes, she's the one not smiling and not wearing her graduation cap.  Oh well, at least she went up there.

I can't believe how much Kaylin is learning and growing.  It's going to be hard to send her to kindergarten in the fall, but she is so excited and ready.

Kaylin turned 5 (a few months ago, but who's counting?)!  She loves a party and decided shortly after her 4th birthday that she was going to have a Tangled party for her 5th birthday.  [Side note:  She has decided that she will have a pajama party for her 6th birthday.]  I started compiling ideas in a folder in my email.  It's hard to believe, but I wasn't using Pinterest at the time.  Once I started actually planning the party I was a Pinterest addict and transferred my favorite ideas to a board.

First up, the invitations.  Come get Tangled in fun at Kaylin's 5th birthday party!!

I was inspired by a tower shaped invitation.  I found a tower shape in the Silhouette store and let my new toy do the dirty work.  I was having some problems with my printer, so I wasn't able to use the print and cut feature.  I settled on just writing it out by hand.

Here is what our guests saw as they arrived on party day:




We played some fun party games:

First we played "pin the frying pan on Flynn Rider":


 Apparently I hung the poster a little too high.  I need to remember not to base things on the height of my incredibly tall daughter... at her 5th birthday check-up she was the height of the average 7 year old and she's a full head taller than quite a few of her friends.  I originally saw the idea for the poster here.  I printed a coloring page off of the Disney site and traced it onto poster board at my mother-in-law's school using her document camera.  I cut the frying pans with my Silhouette and put each kid's initial in the center to make it easier to see whose pan was whose.

Kaylin loves pinatas, so I came up with a lantern pinata:

  
 I used a goldfish cracker box (Costco size).  I glued strips of crepe paper, that I cut to make it look fringed, around it.  I cut suns using my Silhouette and taped them on top.  I made it a pull-string pinata, I wasn't about to have kids swinging a bat in my family room.  Plus I didn't have anywhere to hang it, this way I could just hold it up.

No party is complete without favors!


 I first saw the idea here.  I used purple gift bags (bought at Michael's) with the sun medallion.  My printer was working again, so I used the print and cut feature on my Silhouette and printed each kid's name on a sun.  It worked well because they were able to put their pinata prizes in their bag and they didn't have to worry about getting them mixed up.

Each girl received a sun medallion necklace as they arrived:


Laura had the suns in her stash and donated them to the cause.  She really came through for this party!  I just strung them on thin purple ribbon.

Rapunzel Paints:


I first saw this idea here.  I bought sets of water color paints and used, you guessed it, my Silhouette to cut out suns and labels.

I let Kaylin decorate her own cake using sprinkles and her Tangled figurines: